We Built a 2 Bedroom HOUSE in a Van

And I'm Blake. Our kids are upstairs watching a movie and we are currently in Morocco, Africa. I never thought I would ever say that but we've been on the road now for six months across 10 countries and now it's finally time to share our tiny home on wheels. After we sold our bus bay we took over a year to build out this van and we are so excited to share every single detail with you inside and out and believe me we spared no details. And we have a huge announcement during the tour so stick around for some big plans. Also we know that there is a massive list of people that we could thank during this video. If we did that this would be an hour long intro. So to all the people that gave us amazing ideas, that helped us with the van, our dads, and that helped watch the kids and whatever else we needed help on with the van this is your time to shine. Thank you so much. And without further ado let's do it. Okay welcome to the inside of our tiny home. We want to get started at the front and we want to get started on a topic that we get asked probably more than anything online and that is where do your kids sit while we drive? And the answer to that question is actually this Qualatex Sprinter jump seat. So with our build we knew we wanted to save space but more importantly we wanted to focus on the safety of our kids while we were traveling. So this was the perfect solution. We got to do our build starting behind the driver's seat all the way to the back and we got to have our kids in their car seats in the cab and in the only crash tested area of the van. So you might be wondering where is the other parent while we're driving and no they're not sitting here on the floor. We actually bolted a seat belt through the frame of the van in the back so it's actually kind of become our little self-efficient working space while driving. But probably the best and coolest part of this seat is it actually can be turned around along with the already installed factory swivel seats from Mercedes. So you get an entire bench in the front when you're parked. This is another one of our kind of big secondary living room areas. We love this space because it kind of turns into like an indoor outdoor space. We have the huge window here but best of all when you have the door open and we're sitting here we can be working and the kids can be playing right outside. One little project that we have left to do is we're actually going to add a secondary base plate for our table that's in the back and put that here. That way we have a dedicated desk or table space here as well. And then this counter here actually also has plenty of leg room so we can also work here as well. If you look at the floor space we have almost as much floor space up here as we do in the back. That was a huge priority for us as well. And then on the wall right in front of me there is a little fold-down chair which adds to the seating area. One of the kids can sit there, one can sit here, someone can be working there. We have a little lounge area here as well. We're going to talk about our headliner shelf. This is actually something we have not seen in any other van before. We knew that we wanted to optimize as much storage as we could. As you guys see we have a theme here. We're optimizing space and storage as much as possible. In this headliner shelf typically you'll see the sprinters have you know the typical headliner area and people will make a storage area in there. That's for window shades or blankets and things like that which is all fine and great to use that storage. We knew we needed it to be just a bit bigger because we wanted to have extra space. So we actually dropped down this headliner shelf to just about 15-16 inches and we still fit perfectly fine under here. There's plenty of space for the driver as well. This area here is a full-on cabinet. It's pretty huge in there. It goes all the way from up here to practically the windshield back there and the kids both have one pull-out drawer of their things. So tops, bottoms and socks and whatnot and then behind there where it rounds out and the square drawers can't fit is actually a little bit more storage where we put some light jackets and sweaters. We cycle the kids clothes. They have their cold weather clothes and their summer clothes and they're able to fit a full season of clothes in here. We have not felt like they're missing anything as far as clothes go. This has truly been a lifesaver. On this other side you'll see that there is some more space as well. That's actually where our extra AC and heater stuff goes. I'm gonna let Blake talk about that because I have no idea. I just painted it and made it look cute. As Aleja pointed out you'll notice these vents here. A lot of vans you'll see have that roof mount where you cut a hole and stick it on there but because we didn't have any real estate to work with on the roof we actually found a product that under mounts your air conditioning below the van. So the condenser and compressor are actually under the van. It was really great because we didn't want to take up space anywhere where like everything else is being stored. This was kind of a dead space area where we were able to fit all of that. On top of being able to fit that in here we were able to figure out a way to get ducting between the roof of the van and the base of the topper and insulated and waterproofed housing to run along the roof of the van and drop down into the ceiling. Aleja and I actually parked in like 90 degree weather in Texas and at night we were able to sleep cozy because it stayed nice and chilly in here. And the second major thing was from this blower here we were actually able to duct it up to the topper to have a separate climate zone. Let's see another top three question we get on our van is where did you get your ladder? And our ladder so happens to be right here. As we mentioned before everything is linked so you can find this ladder on our what's it called. But we had to do several things to modify it in order for it to work with our space. We added a housing and a magnet to the ladder so that a deadbolt will come out when it gets close and this button releases it like that. Now you just pull it down and let it slide to the floor. It's very satisfying. It was really important for us to not have to grab another thing and find another place to store something. And all the bumpy driving we've done in the six months we've been in it it's never come down or budged. It's been a very faithful mechanism in our van. This is our hard-sided topper. We see a lot of tents on vans and we knew we wanted something like that but since we're full-time we wanted something that was able to be insulated and safer for our kids. For the main things in here as far as space goes, as you can see it's pretty big. You can fit a queen-size bed in here but we opted for two kids beds so that the kids each had their individual areas as well as axolotl and funfi. These beds are also the Betty's beds and then that way the kids kind of are able to be tucked into their beds and they can make their own beds as well which is adorable. Blake was able to get all of our ducting for AC and heating fully in here. They've got lights along the sides. This is a max air fan also. They have tons of ventilation. The other thing that's really nice about this is the window area is also hard-sided and locks from the inside. Safety first but it can fully open as well. Pull that handle and you have first a window within that and then if you want some more air to come in you can also open that second window and heaven forbid anything happen but in the event of an emergency where they can't come down their door into the van we can get them from here and they also know in an emergency that they can climb out of here if need be. These are priced like at a really great price. We've actually seen some fabric tents and toppers that are around the same price and for what you get for this it's actually pretty incredible. That's available on our website or you can just message us and we can kind of help you with the purchasing of that. The kids absolutely love it up here. They seek it out like if they're like I just want alone time or I want to go have quiet time they'll ask us to bring the ladder down for them. Blake and I still have the living space downstairs where we can clean and prep for the next day. We can work, watch tv, etc. In my opinion the most underrated part of making a van feel like a home are its counters. These counters specifically are real quartz. They're actually silestone by the company Cosentino. Shout out to our buddy Justin at Stone Systems. He really worked with us for a long time trying to figure out exactly what we wanted. I was really picky on the look and feel of the counters and Blake was very picky on the weight. Obviously we couldn't have something super heavy and so we were actually able to find the perfect thing in this silestone. It's actually super thin and lightweight and they make it look like this thick residential countertop because they add a lip to the front. So we just get the best of both worlds and this countertop is gorgeous. If you scoot back you can see just how long we're talking. It just keeps going and going and going and going. With the team at Cosentino, Blake actually made a template with the plywood that we had in the van during the build process and with that template they were able to build exactly what we needed size and shape wise here. So you can see this rounds out because we have two kids and we're trying to avoid as many accidents as possible. It splits here halfway because our fridge is taller so the secondary counter is a little bit taller than the first one and then it drops down and comes over to our stove and sink area and I truly am so obsessed. Since we're here in the kitchen and speaking of trying to make it residential, I also wanted to do a true backsplash and I ultimately decided on these clay X's and O tiles. Each tile is handmade so it makes it really unique and I just love the way that this turned out. It really makes the entrance feel grand and spacious but also very warm and homey as well as our giant sink. I really fought tooth and nail for this sink. My precious sink was the cause of a few disagreements if you will because it is quite large. This is 24 by 18. This is actually a house sink. It took some convincing and it is legitimately massive with two kids on the road and two adults cooking three meals a day because we love to cook here at home. It needs space in the sink. I'm not trying to spend my day washing dishes. You shove them in there, you cover it up, you have some extra counter space. It truly is one of the best things in here. So one of the least talked about things or seen or least sexy things in our vans that's actually probably the most important to our daily life and health is our water filter. It's the Guzzle H2O 2x10 Stealth with UV purification. It kills 99% of bacteria at a high volume so when we fill up here in Morocco or in Norway, we don't really have to worry because we filter it from the hose and we have a two-stage really intense filter here at the sink which provides for a really safe drinking water especially with having kids. We just don't want to worry about getting sick. Low-key, one of the most important things on this entire van. Other than the water filter, there's nothing crazy under the sink. We've got household cleaning supplies. You can see the filter kind of behind there. With our supplies, we've got our pull-out trash can and I think this is the same trash we had in our bus and it's good. We decided with this empty space between the sinks to take advantage of having it and to not waste it. She made these stealthy push drawers. Because we're near the sink, we actually have a mirror up there. We put our bathroom like lotions and toothbrush stuff right there so we don't have to go grab it out of anything. Here we have more kitchen stuff. Most satisfying as they are so much fun to press and open and close. And in the spirit of not wasting space, most kitchens have a toe kick and they're built up onto wood. We wanted to again not waste any volume or space so more kitchen stuff and this one in particular helps us get up onto our bed. So with our kitchen cabinetry, we made it as far back as it could possibly go to the wall without also coming into the hallway too far so we could fit absolutely everything we needed as we have our full-time. When we were packing the van, we actually, you know, we were kind of planning on being disappointed but from a kitchen appliance and pots and pans standpoint, I think we fit everything. Probably our greatest kitchen highlight that doesn't have to do with the build but it has to do with what we brought are these pots and pans. You have your pot and you have your handles but when you pack it away, having these handles even in a house makes life terrible. This truly, we're not sponsored by them. We don't, I don't even know if we have links for them but they are game changers with packing ware space because we can put them together tight with their little cushions and fit so many pots and pans in one place with our extra handles. So now moving to the back part of our kitchen, we have our fridge. This is the Isotherm 200. This is a counter height fridge that actually has the same amount of volumes as some of those tall fridges you see in some vans and in RVs. My parents have an RV and they have a tall fridge that looks residential. This actually has more volume than even that one which is pretty amazing. In our opinion, with all of the research that we did, this is the best, most voluminous van fridge out there. It let us keep our counter height so that we didn't have to delete any of the windows. We will go shopping for a week and a half, sometimes up to two weeks and everything fits in here. The first time we shopped for the van, we were so pleasantly surprised at how much stuff we could fit in here. A lot of the design ideas that have happened in this van are from push and pull between Aleja and myself. Originally, I wanted to have the microwave up here where it's just up and out of the way. Ugly. But Aleja did not want to break up these pretty cabinets which makes sense. I was like, okay, if we put it down here in our cabinetry, then we kind of have some dead space sitting behind the microwave. That whole process helped create one of the coolest parts of our van and we call it our pop-up coffee station. Our microwave is here which we'll show you but we needed the space to go upwards behind it. It's a lot of space. There's a lot of volume in this pop-up. Getting to our coffee stuff is really easy and non-hassle and it's just really satisfying when in the morning you just press a button, it pops up and you're ready to to make your morning pleasures. And when you're all done, you just push it closed. As I mentioned before, our microwave is not up there. It is down here. Something about this cabinet is it was 100% designed around the sizes of our appliances. Up top, we've got the microwave and down below is our air fryer three-in-one convection oven thing you see all the time. And if you pull this out all the way and behind it, we've got our instapot and our blender. So we're able to pack almost every appliance in our house from our fridge to our oven to our microwave, instapot, blender and our coffee maker are all within one foot of each other. Something fun and little things that I like is because it's so close with the platform for our stove here, when you put it away, it's got to be in the exact spot every time. So we actually routed out little feet for it so that it would sit perfect to go back into the cabinet. And on this last cabinet in our 10-foot counter, as you can see how much kitchen stuff we have and prioritize, we have more accoutrements like our flat grill, our chopper. And then up here we have our Tupperware, coffee grinder and Aleja's sourdough bread measurer or weighing scale. Yes, that's the word. And we're actually, we're not all the way to the end of the counter just yet. There's two more drawers and I'm going to let Aleja take over. This last drawer is our medicine cabinet. This bad boy holds all kinds of things. So we have prescription stuff in here, vitamins, supplements, first aid kit, choking extractor, if you will. But believe me, we are prepared. Those are the perks of being a paranoid Columbian. Last but not least on our little roundy corner end of our cabinet is this little drawer down here. This is our kids learning and crafts drawer. It's right in front of the wheel well, which is why it's this depth. As you can see at the end of the counter, everything here is rounded. It was more difficult to engineer that, but it was super worth it because the rest of the space is an open area. Actually, speaking of round cabinets, let's move on to our pantry. It is so unexpectedly spacious given how narrow it is. It has five, I think 18 inch long shelves in here. Again, the organization right now leaves a lot to be desired, but when kids are rummaging through it, what are you going to do? Truly, we have not wanted for anything as far as this pantry goes. And again, shout out to my dad. He built this for us. He did such an amazing job and had all the tolerances go as far as they possibly could so we could fit as much as possible in here. Such a lifesaver to have this much pantry space. Below the pantry is this adorable little game nook door that actually comes out all of the way. This little door comes out, we can play our games, and then just behind there is nothing important. It's just some electrical components that Blake needed to be able to access. You got to use all the space you can get and so we're using this to the best of its capability. As you can see right now, I am standing in the open floor space of our living room in the back of a Sprinter van. It's pretty cool to think about that everything in our van was actually designed around nothing. It was designed around empty space. This was super important to us for lots of reasons. For having this open feeling and probably most importantly for our kids. When we decided to do van life as a family, we knew that we could not do it if there was not open space. We know that the weather is not going to be perfect every single place we go, although we wish it were. So we need to have inside space for them to be able to lay down, play, build a train track, do Legos, build things, dump all of these toys out, and it's pretty big. I mean I can do a little yoga back here. This is what we're talking about when we say this has never been done in a van before. We're pretty confident in that. Our little van was supposed to be a limo van and that's why it has all of these windows. We wanted to make sure we did not delete any of the windows in here and having this living room area surrounded by windows, you're able to see your view wherever you are, sit on our super comfy couch. I wish you guys could see my view right now. Speaking of windows, I know the insulation police out there are going to be pretty worried about all of the windows that we have. We know because we watched endless amounts of YouTube videos about van builds. So never fear, we are super insulated on the walls. We have like three layers of wool insulation and then second of all, we got residential cellular shades that have two internal layers as well as the exterior cellular layers. We got those for all of the windows. That helps keep everything super insulated in the window areas. We've tested it in hot weather and in cold weather and so far it has not let us down. Plus we have heated floors for when it's cold. So when those shades are up and we've got our heat going, we're snuggled up, we don't even know what temperature it is outside. It is 10 out of 10. Not including the driver area, we have seven windows in our living space and we do not regret a thing. Since we opted not to cover up any of the limo windows that already came in the van, we did want to install two openable slider windows because none of them were able to open when we got the van. So we installed two AM auto slider windows on each corner of the van. We love it because even when our door is closed, we can have the two diagonal slider windows open and it creates a perfect breeze for ventilation. In our living room area we have a 27 inch tv. It was supposed to be a samson frame but samson frame on a budget which we love. Now moving over to our couch area, this is an 80 inch couch made out of three cushions that fully expand. This is a multi-way bench. This has so many modes it can be in. You can have a right L, a left L, and a full U bench. You can also use it in dinette mode which we'll show you in just a second. And then last but not least, it can fully open up all the way so if you want to have a big lounge or if you have guests you can also have two people sleep down there as well. Pretty important for us to have a table that the kids could do school on and that we could have family dinners on and so Blick created this table. It is on one of those movable like things and it actually can also fully open to be way bigger for either the kids art projects or for a bigger family dinner. So we can all four of us sit here super comfortably. I teach my classes, we edit our videos, etc. Most of the time we do have this out but if we ever don't want it in the area or we're doing something that requires us to put it away, we can pull it off of this and tuck it inside of the bench. And speaking of what's inside this bench, that whole back section of the van is empty so that put a really big challenge in fitting all of the systems that make van life comfortable on one side of the van. So if I move this guy in section number one, we'll call this the power section, the mitochondria of the van. So one of the very first projects we had when we were just drawing and designing this floor plan which had nothing on the other side, we had to find batteries that were small enough to fit the space but powerful enough to fit our power needs because we don't have gas or propane so everything on board is powered by electricity or batteries. Seriously, we could not find except for one that would fit the metrics of our space and it was Dakota Lithium. And we called them and we told them all about what our plans were and they said they were on board and they powered our entire electrical system. And if you're building a van right now and you do not have much space to work with, there really aren't many competitors that focus as much on that aspect as they do. Our 1200 amp hours of goodness are actually stowed behind this wall panel that we can actually remove in the event that we would need to. Given that they have a 13-year warranty on these and like thousands of charge cycles, I don't think we'll be needing to do that for a while. You'll see our inverter is stacked on top of it here with ventilation and behind that we actually, as Aleja mentioned, have space to fit our table and other things. So a lot of people will go out there and get gigantic battery banks just like yeah power but you have to have something that can also charge and keep up with that amount of power. A lot of people skip over that. We actually have one of the coolest and unique charging sources is Nation's Alternator. So we actually got under the hood and they helped us every step of the way from afar and we installed a second alternator on the van that's connected to like the flywheel of the engine. It absorbs when that engine is running an enormous amount of power. It's actually rated up to 280 amps. We pretty much never have to plug in because our Nation's Alternator is charging us and our Dakota Lithium batteries is storing it. And so not having an electricity bill for those two things has been game-changing. In this third section of the bench we have our entire heating and plumbing system of the van. When I say heating I mean water heat, air heat, and coolest of all we have a glycol in-floor heating system with Rixons. And it's quiet and it's also that radiant heat that just has a different type of heat where it heats like the cabinets. It heats everything up. It just is so cozy and comfortable in here in cold temperatures. You can turn it on and it hardly uses any energy. Probably the coolest flashiest component of this system is it's actually tied to our engine's coolant system. So when we turn on our car, our car can actually be the source of heat for our floors, our water, and that will heat everything while we're driving. And inversely if we're in really cold temperatures we can heat up and preheat our engine with our heating system in the back of the van. I think anyone that comes in our van in the cold and steps on the floors and feels how warm it is would attest to it being a massive luxury. In summary if you've not passed out yet or if you're still here and you haven't scrubbed through, thank you so much. In this first section we have all of our electrical and charging components. In this next section we have our inverter and batteries and storage behind that. And in the third section we have our entire heating system and our plumbing system all in this entire bench. So right here we have like all of our systems and our screens for that. We have our Rixson's heating system. We have our air conditioning. These switches right here will be on and off for different zones of heating below the van. Another great company we work with that you know we sought out a lot of the utility stuff of the van so it could be comfortable is we found these really unique water tanks with Vanspeed. We actually carry at max capacity 65 gallons of water and we carry them in two different sections down below just so we could distribute weight a little bit better. So we can actually when one gets empty transfer water to utilize that 65 gallons. And generally when we're driving in between areas we only like to carry that 25 and when we park up we can hit this transfer switch and that will dump water into our main tank that all the systems are connected to. We know again our favorite van utility folks will be coming after us for carrying water on the outside of And we actually did something really cool to mitigate against freezing. Not only do we have little heating lily pads controlled by these buttons for each tank below but we also our glycol radiant system has hot tubes that wrap our tanks at 180 degrees each. So when we're running our heating system we're also running radiant hot engine coolant around our tanks. We've been to pretty cold temperatures in Switzerland and we have not frozen up yet. We wanted to have space on the inside. We didn't want to take up more space with tanks and we're also a family of four that doesn't want to live in arctic temperatures constantly. So we opted on having a lot of our tanks outside and came up with cool solutions to keep them warm. To our sleeping arrangements, to our bed. Our bed was another probably top three projects that took the most time like engineering and building and prolonged our construction phase. But we knew we wanted an elevator bed so we could have a living room as you've seen below the bed. However there are some limitations to all the options that we had. So of course we opted on the longest route customizing our own bed lift system. One of the main things about the happy jack that we didn't like and if you go on online to see examples which it's a smooth seamless bed but you have to build four walls around the corners of the bed in order to allow a tracking system to support the bed. We wanted kind of this open counter and open space all the way through the back of the doors and the same goes for here. We'd have to build a wall out on both sides so again everything that we did on this van was to fight for openness and space and that we did. We got a really heavy duty worm motor which is located in here and we also put a battery inside this box so there's no dangling wires or you know things that could be getting caught. We can actually just plug it in and charge it and we only have to charge it like once every couple weeks. When you focus on aesthetics it allows you to invent to also make it functional somehow. There's a lot of technical details that I won't go into. It can hold over a thousand pounds with everything we have it supported by. If you guys want us to we can kind of make a detailed breakdown of how we made the bed or you never know we may just come out with a product. We really like it we love how it's really hidden it's out of the way and it doesn't break any space. Another fun thing about our bed which we drew on some inspiration from our friends basically nomads is we actually had a little volume between the framing of our bed inside of it so we could create some storage for more clothes like athletic wear or swimsuits or whatever that we didn't want to access as easily. As for the sizing of the bed I'm six foot got plenty of room it's pretty much the size of like an rv queen is what they call it. Also shout out to Edan and Nicole we were worried about the thickness of the mattress and they pointed us to a custom mattress that is extremely comfortable. Anyone that's slept on it or that's been in the van has said that they loved it. So we wanted to make sure that our van still had a ton of personality on the front as well as the top the sides the back the inside etc. So we also got an aluminous front bumper this is the recon bumper. Obviously the front bumper is the first line of defense it's to protect the van but it also looks pretty cool I think it looks pretty legit. Obviously we have lights mounted on here there's also lights on the inside and in here eventually we're going to get a winch for recovery just in case anything were to happen. She's got some jewelry here which I think is for recovery as well and then it also has a hitch so you could attach something there like you would on a back hitch like another bike rack. So this is the aluminous recon bumper it's pretty sick if you ask me. As we probably mentioned this is the 170 extended 3500 Sprinter. It looks more like a truck because it has four dually tires in the back and can hold a lot of weight. For a few reasons we still wanted to have the singular tire it's called a super single conversion. Something really cool about these rims actually is if you pop a tire you'll notice that the rear rim is different than the front rim kind of like in a dually setup that you can actually reverse the spare tire front ways or back ways so that it works anywhere on the rig. Since we decided on a floor plan where we don't have a fixed bed in the back it's an entire living room with no garage space on the inside of the van we had to get really creative with a full-time setup needing to still store a lot of gear stuff tools and all the things. This aluminous explorer box is probably the main hub of where we store a lot of our gear and it fits a like our entire outdoor chairs and tools and everything as well as our roof cargo carrier and our tire bag on the back. We're actually able to store and carry all of our gear without having to take up any precious space on the inside of the van where we wanted our living room. One of the most critical components of the entire exterior of the van is right above my head. This is actually the power lift bike rack system by Lumines. So when we were planning our van and being able to bring our e-bikes with us where to put them actually kind of put us at a crossroads. We could put them up high on the back doors of the van but our e-bikes are pretty heavy or we could have them low which we really didn't want them to do on like a hitch rack to extend our already long van as well as have them much more susceptible for theft. We wanted them high and they're heavy but we had a problem. When Aleja and I saw the prototype of this our jaws were on the floor. This is exactly what we were talking about. It was a way to store our bikes up high where we didn't have to hoist them and we didn't have to extend the length of our van. This seriously has been such a game changer for us. We don't have to worry about backing into things and also people stealing our bikes. As we mentioned inside we're carrying 65 gallons of fresh water and that was only possible by finding those crazy unique and strong water tanks by Vanspeed. Our main 40 gallon water tank is actually taking up the space of our spare tire so we actually had to pull our tire off put the tank in there and find a new spot for our spare tire. Now we're driving in Europe with really tiny roads really tight spaces so we didn't want to add to the side of the van when we needed to squeeze into some spots so having this tire ladder on the back plus being able to carry our spare tire and have those giant water tanks that are like fully supported below being able to integrate all of that with Vanspeed allows us to carry more in our back doors and take more showers. Now we're at one of the crown jewels of our van that is our floor-to-ceiling closet going along with the theme of prioritizing having plenty of storage. On this side of the closet we have our dresser space. It has a floor-length mirror hanging room as well as shelves for both Blake and I to store all of our clothes in it. So much space we love it. On this side we have the other side which is where we primarily keep our toiletries and whatnot. It has tons of space in here as well and then that close-off space you see at the bottom is for our toilet but you'll see that in just a second. Welcome to our shower! This was by far the most complicated project of the entire conversion. All of our delays were because of this but we knew we wanted a luxurious shower because we were full-time but we also need our belongings with an open floor plan. We have seen other iterations like this online and there are so many smart people that come up with like crazy ways to use a big volume thing inside of a shower. We've seen it on like hinges coming into the hallway. We've seen it on drawer slides pushing into the entrance of the van and so we wanted to capitalize on using the shower space but we had a really big issue with hardware being in the shower. So for example if you have drawer slides in the bottom of your shower pan getting wet that are going through we knew that it could work from like a movement standpoint but we didn't want to be stuck like in Morocco with some issues. So we really wanted to come up with a way where we could not have hardware in the wet zone. So one night Aleja's dad and myself we were sitting in the van staring at it just trying to come up with a way to make it waterproof and kind of at the same moment we looked up and Mike goes what if we did it from the ceiling and we both just clicked realizing that if we created a way for it to float and suspend then we could generate a continuous waterproof seal on this wall making it entirely waterproof that water could not get around on like a cam seal as well as the hardware is from above not getting wet in the shower and both of those things coming together we're like we can do this. And we are honored to be patent pending on the functionality of the system and how we achieve the waterproofing. So at the beginning we told you guys that we had a very special announcement and don't worry we have not forgotten. Since the beginning of our journey we have gotten so many messages about recreating our van. So we are so happy to announce that we are partnering with Vanspeed. And as of today you can officially buy the Bryles Adventure Van. So our amazing floor plan and all of our innovative features like the patented shower and the hard-sided chopper all ready to go and professionally built so that you can take your crew on epic adventures and who knows maybe even join us on the road. And off the bat you probably have so many questions if you're interested and that's why we've prepared just a couple FAQs. And additionally you can find all of this information on our website at thebryles.com and there you can shoot us a message if you have any detailed questions to ask. So right off the bat all of the vans are going to be RVIA and Mercedes expert outfitter certified. And they'll be in-house financing with loans up to 20 years. Plus if you get on the short list to start your build spots right away you'll be ready to adventure by this summer. And even though we're in Morocco right now we'll be there to hand you the keys. We literally cannot believe this is real life. We're so excited to get some of you into our van. We can't wait to see where you go what you do in it and we just really hope that you love it as much as we do. We want to bring the spirit of adventure to everyone we possibly can and we can't think of a better way to do that. So thanks for being here. Okay this video is getting way too long so we're gonna hit you guys with a lightning round of some of our favorite little goodies around the van. Painted flowers, pop-up table, that expands. Our cute little minimalist outlet. Definitely the most used in the van and we actually have seven total outlets. Magnus in the ceiling for hanging towels and other things. Better yet we've got them all over the van. Another minimalist feature our outdoor shower. Thanks Tim. A full suspension and a lift on the front and rear axle installed by Blake and Aleja's Automotive. Fully tiled entrance with shoe storage which is huge by the way. It goes all the way back there. Plus if you notice the tile also matches my backsplash. Exterior outlet, shore plug, and a plug-in for throwout solar panels giving us a total of a thousand watts between the roof and the ground. A cup wash. So satisfying. Thank you Alex. Our decorative wall complete with a picture of our angel puppy Bo and some friends from the road. Not to mention cute little hooks. 13 foot Fiamma electric awning and on the passenger side below their feet there's some sneaky cool additional storage. On the back half of the van behind the topper we have our giant roof cargo carrier with off-season clothes and other garage stuff. We have our trio flat mount star link that we can actually remove magnetically from the roof rack just in case we're under trees or we need it to see the sky. A 200 watt solar panel giving us 600 watts on the roof and at the very back my personal favorite Ryan at Camel Roof Racks designed this roller bar to load really big and heavy equipment onto the top of the van so it doesn't rub the side of the van you can just roll it on that bar. Also speaking of Ryan because he's so extra if you look at the logo of his camel that he laser etched into his rack you should see the tiny hairs on the back of camel's tail that will tell you a little something about his attention to detail. Also another humble brag for Ryan is that he was able to engineer and design his roof rack to suspend the topper without needing any cross members so that we could actually run circular and insulated air conditioning ducting below the topper and above the roof of the van. We've been in the nomadic space since five years. Wow five years. This is our fifth year. One of them was building the van so I guess that was a year off. We've been in the space long enough to recognize the different advantages of different types of vehicles for example like trucks and unimogs can get to like the most untouchable places and go over like the craziest terrain. And then you have small vans and those vans can obviously get anywhere in any city park in parking lots and maneuver maybe a little bit easier. And then on the other hand you have the huge rigs like the class a's and fifth wheels and trailers that have a ton of space and a ton of amenities like pop-outs. Yeah we had a giant one but we realized in designing this that we wanted to make something that sits right in the middle of all of those categories and we feel like with this layout and this van we made the best world traveling family setup. We can go in tiny roads of Ireland and at the same time we're here in Morocco with our 4x4 getting over sand dunes and in mountainous places. And not only that but we also get to have some of the amenities that a bigger rig would have because we planned so vigorously every single inch of this place so that we could have two large open areas and just have the space and the comfort that a lot of the big rigs offer. So yeah we put our blood sweat and marriage into this build. We knew that we wanted to do it because we wanted to travel the world together as a family and we can say for the last six months that it has been incredible to have kind of this like mini apartment style van be able to go everywhere that we've gone. It's why we're doing this to be together with our kids and to travel and this van has helped us achieve that.